Why do I have crap lungs?
April 1, 2016 9:14 PM   Subscribe

Inspired by this post - I have breathing problems when exercising that I don't think are asthma. Has anyone else ever had an issue like this and if so, what is it called and how do I fix it?

The previous post mentioned having difficulty breathing in pools. I had the exact same problem as a kid/teenager, where I would feel like my breathing was constricted until I pulled my torso out of the pool, at which point I could breathe. My pediatrician basically shrugged and said "chlorine. You're sensitive." and that was it. I was kind of surprised to see all these other people saying they had the same issue, and now I wonder whether it's related to another issue I have and if others have experienced it too.

Up until about fifth grade, I was hands down the fastest runner in my class. I always won the school field day stuff. No issues running, sprinting, climbing, etc. All of a sudden, as puberty set in, I stopped being able to sprint without feeling like my lungs were closing off, noisy wheezing, and a sort of panicked feeling when it happened. That's since extended into climbing-related activities, whether it's climbing stairs or hiking a mountain or anything like that. I've been doing CrossFit for a little over a year now and it's also the case with anything squat-related during the conditioning set; wallballs, thrusters, lunges, etc. Basically, the stuff that really works my quads. (Doing squats for strength is fine because those are slow, low-rep, and have more rest between sets. Doing this stuff for time sets it off.)

Symptoms:
- I'll go from feeling normal exercise out-of-breath to suddenly feeling like my lungs are constricting, my chest is tight, I'm gasping for air very noisily and loudly (like seriously, it echoes in my gym), I feel panicked and close to tears, and I have to stop what I'm doing completely and carefully try to slow my breathing to wait to get my breath back. This can take anywhere from maybe 30 seconds to over a minute. I can always feel it coming on.
- It gets more frequent as I keep exercising. If I stop and get my breath back, and then start up again, I'm more likely to have another attack/episode sooner. (Example: I hiked the Bright Angel trail in the Grand Canyon with my husband earlier this year. I got through maybe the first hour of the hike up with minimal stopping, and it steadily increased to the point I was having to stop every few minutes)
- It's always as I'm exercising. It's never post-exercise, the way I read a lot of EIA is. As soon as I stop exercising, within a minute or two I'm perfectly fine.

Possibly relevant information:
- They did an asthma test on me as a teenager - running (jogging, not sprinting) on a treadmill, doing lung capacity stuff, etc, and said I was not asthmatic. Doctors since have basically shrugged and said "then don't do the kind of exercise that sets it off."
- An inhaler has never solved it. I've had a couple of doctors shrug and prescribe one for me (to be used prior to physical activity) but it's never made the problem go away. Maybe at best it extended the "relapse" time between attacks or whatever, but it all still happened with the same level of intensity.
- This still happened even when I was in the best shape of my life playing field hockey in high school
- As I get into better shape, it can stave off the onset of the symptoms by a very short time, but I've never not had a problem
- When I played hockey I had no issues tolerating a 30 minute jogging session for conditioning, but if we did suicides, by the second one I couldn't breathe. These days I can't run because my knees have issues, but doing rope jumping, endurance rowing, etc at the gym for longer periods of time (as in a couple of minutes of rope jumping or up to 10 minutes of rowing) doesn't cause the symptoms.
- It happens in cold, moderate temps, and in heat - for the year I've been doing CrossFit I've been in the tropics where the temp during my workouts has never been below 75 deg F, and humidity is high.
- I can't figure out any correlations to diet, amount of water I'm drinking, time of the month, or anything else.
- When I was a kid, I had a misdiagnosed case of pneumonia at age 6 that put me in the hospital for a week, and then recurrent bronchitis like clockwork every September after for years, and to this day I'm still highly prone to colds moving into my chest and becoming pneumonia and/or bronchitis. Not sure whether those infections fucked my lungs, or whether my lungs are just bad, or whether it's irrelevant.
- I'm a cis woman.

Anyone have an idea about what's going on? Any recommendations? I'd love to get through a workout where I only rest because I'm tired or my muscles are giving out, rather than because I can't breathe.
posted by olinerd to Health & Fitness (7 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Long shot: get checked for alpha-1 anti trypsin deficiency.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:36 PM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


feeling like my lungs were closing off, noisy wheezing, and a sort of panicked feeling

Do you think this could be an anxiety or phobia issue which is inducing this? Especially this put that possibility in my head:

I feel panicked and close to tears, and I have to stop what I'm doing completely and carefully try to slow my breathing to wait to get my breath back.

It is a chicken or egg question (are you tense and getting panicky, or panicky and then getting tense?), but maybe you are phobic about having this kind of incident and that causes you to tense your diaphragm and intercostal muscles as you go about your workouts and activities. As soon as your exertion level calls on your respiratory system to pick up the pace, the feeling of deficiency prompts you to have a panic-like response. I have noticed in my own physical activities (jiu jitsu and Latin dance) that I can carry around with me tension in all kinds of places. I can even react by "locking up" sometimes in a situation if the anxiety is acute enough (jaw clenching or back spasms). Just throwing this hypothesis out there. Maybe you could try really easing yourself into workouts for awhile so much so that you don't get this response and teach your body that it can breathe normally; then gradually working up to the intensity you want to achieve over time.
posted by incolorinred at 10:05 PM on April 1, 2016 [1 favorite]


I have hypoglycemia. When my blood sugar level drops, it triggers an asthma attack. I used to think that I had exercise induced asthma, but only some of the time. Turns out, I was pushing myself without the right sugar level and causing it. I now watch what I'm eating and when I'm eating and I am off Singulair (happily off, made me fat!) and only using the inhaler on days when I've been exposed to an allergen.
posted by myselfasme at 10:38 PM on April 1, 2016


I am not saying this is true for you, but this used to happen to me also and I only discovered it when I went to a CBT boot camp for anxiety. I used to get panicky feelings when I went running, gasping for breath, everything you describe.

During the boot camp I had to do various things that mimic the feeling of anxiety, like making myself dizzy or out of breath.

I was able to spin in a chair no problem, but when I ran up and down stairs and pushed my heart and breathing into intense aerobic levels, my brain misinterpreted that feeling as panic. My understanding is that sometimes our reptile brains take that panting and think, "Oh God, there's something scary out there!! We must panic!" and you start to get those panicky feelings.

I learned some CBT techniques to tell myself it's only a feeling, a feeling isn't a fact, and now that I know my brain is just trying to protect me but is being stupid, I'm able to run without getting panicky.
posted by yes I said yes I will Yes at 6:26 AM on April 2, 2016 [1 favorite]


Have you googled the term "exercise-induced shortness of breath"? That seems to be a useful term. Alas, as you've discovered, there doesn't seem to be any obvious solution to it.
posted by Melismata at 7:51 AM on April 2, 2016


This could be totally wrong, but is it possible it's related to your anemia? You mentioned on my ferritin question that you're frequently borderline anemic and have had low ferritin before (thanks again for your suggestions, btw! Planning to talk to my GP about IV iron soon).

I have no idea if the shortness of breath from low iron/anemia could turn into the attacks you describe when you're exercising hard, but I know, for me, when I'm feeling low-iron-y, even just walking up one flight of stairs can get me pretty out of breath. At that point, I usually just stop and lay down for a little while, but I'm lazy. Maybe you're more hardcore and you're pushing through the earlier, milder shortness of breath and essentially getting to the place where you just can't get enough oxygen? Also, you mentioned that this started around puberty - so maybe it's related to anemia from menstruation?

I'll also mention that the only time I've felt that sort of chest contracting, really-seriously-can't-breathe thing is while swimming in super cold water on a hike in Hawaii. I remember feeling panicky about it when it happened, which makes me wonder if some of what was mentioned upthread about anxiety might be playing into it, even if it's completely physiological (totally makes sense for your body to panic if you can't get enough oxygen!) and not psychological. I know I'd be a little hesitant to get back in water that cold at this point.

In any event, this does not sound fun, and I'm sorry you're having to deal with it! Good luck!
posted by bananacabana at 7:29 PM on April 2, 2016


I was treated for all kinds of weird things, including costochondritis and panic attacks, to explain my shortness of breath. No help until I was finally diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. (terrible name, but the tachy is the most obvious part)

A number of symptoms, but there's this: I am technically in reasonable physical condition but sometimes exertion just flips a switch, heart starts racing, I can't breathe, I can barely think. Frustrating, I am not anxious, I am not in distress, I wasn't even over-exerting, I am just suddenly at the end of my physical rope.

If POTS can do it probably other disorders can do it too, not trying to suggest you must have POTS.
posted by galadriel at 7:11 PM on April 3, 2016


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